URBS560 - SCHOOL REFORM PUB POLICY

This course will examine how changes in the global economy require America's schools to educate all students to new and demanding standards, and will review the arguments why the current school system, designed for a different economy and a different century, must be fundamentally reorganized if the nation is to succeed in meeting its human capital development challenge.Topics covered will include school funding and governance, the precedent-breaking federal legislation, No Child Left Behind, and charter schools and the voucher movement. Students can effect real-world change through research designed to elaborate the comprehensive school-reform model developed at Penn's Operation Public Education, which is now being piloted in some of the nation's schools.